From 2008 to 2010, I worked at a Sam Ash Music Megastore. While they didn’t treat their employees too well, I look back at my time there as a positive experience. I met some amazing people, I learned so much about guitar and recording gear, and I had a lot of fun. The majority of my time there was working in the warehouse. I was the store receiver. My sole responsibility was to receive and organize all inventory brought into the store. Every day I’d open 50-200 boxes of product, scan them into our system, and then organize them into storage. Depending on the products, some would go straight out to the sales floor.

ME – playing on Sam Ash’s iMac. 2008

I worked in the warehouse with two other dudes. John V. was in charge of all outgoing product, and our Operations Manager, Bomba. Stock transfers, outgoing repairs, and recalled equipment were John’s responsibility. Bomba’s job was to make sure we handled our stuff, and keeping the available inventory and repair inventory as accurate as possible. They were some of my favorite coworkers I’ve ever gotten to know.

ME – goofing off in the warehouse. 2009

That was just the warehouse department. There were several other departments: Customer Service, Brass and Winds, Pro Audio, Drums, and the Guitar department. Adam was the Pro Audio dept manager. He had actually got me the job at Sam Ash. He had recognized me from our time at Los Angeles Recording School.

One day Adam was throwing out a DBX 160X compressor. I asked what was wrong with it. He said he wasn’t sure because the TRS jacks were broken. He explained I would have to wire up leads to the back terminal to figure out the issue. I figured one day I would get into fixing it, so I took it.

Cut to 7+ years later I finally grabbed it out of storage. I dusted it off and plugged it in!

I wired it up into my system and it sounded like it was working. The TRS jacks worked fine, but the gain reduction meter was blank. So I thought perhaps the LEDS were blown. I googled the issue. I couldn’t find any info on blown led meters for the DBX. Instead I found that there are supposed to be two jumpers on the back terminal. I looked back there and there were missing. So I took some small stranded wire and screwed them in.

I plugged it back in… DONE! It’s works and looks beautifully!

I’m not even sure you could call this a repair, but I turned someone’s trash into a $200 dollar piece of pro audio gear.